Leaving No Child Behind

“Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.” (Lamentation 2:19)

One morning, just after school began the counselor came into my office, closed and leaned on the door, and said, “Dave, you will never believe this. “Timmy” just came to my office crying. He asked me if I would help him get a job because he could never go home – he has just been voted out of the house.”

I asked, “What happened?”

She said, “Timmy was told to ‘pick up his room’ and he did not do it, so his father called a family meeting and voted him out of the house.”

I will confess that I have thought of the same thing, for the same reason, with my own kids, but I never did it. I loved them.

“He’s down in my office heart broken.”

By the way, his brother “Tommy” in the first grade was emotionally disturbed. He had watched his biological mother shoot herself in the head when he was only three. In the same grade, we had a child who was sexually abused by his father when he was one year old. Who cares for these children? Children just like these are living in the apartments just down the street from you. Who cares for their souls?

I was on recess duty one day, and I noticed David [4th grade] sitting all alone on the stone wall. I went over and asked him, “David, is there something wrong?” His answer was, “My mother just left us last night, she is on her way to California.” I walked and talked with him while my heart bled for him, but I could not replace his mother. Who in the church will be a mother to David?

I remember another David, same grade but in another year, who was reported missing one morning. Later, a neighbor brought him to school. It seemed that he had a fight with his grandmother who beat him and he ran away. His father was actively running drugs and his mother was in jail for the same offense. I had to call Child Services who came and the police took him away to a group home, which was worse than his Grandmother’s house. David never forgave me for “narking” to the police.

I remember the same year bending the rules and allowing a 5th grade girl to return to school after she had been put in a foster home out of the district. The reason? Her Step Dad was sexually abusing her. Would someone in you church please invite her to church and show her true love? I also let a little Spanish boy continue coming to our school when his parents went back to Mexico – the father was dying from AIDS.

I remember sitting up late one night with grieving parents whose daughter had just run away, we were trying to trace her down. The church was there for I was the church.

Does your church have room for these kids? These children are still with us. In fact, they are living just down the street from you. They are all around us. They are in the small homes and in the apartments all around our churches in America. Please take time for them. Someone please get the church bus going again. Please, open your arms to these children. These children are dying for lack of love. They are dying of spiritual hunger at the top of every street.

Do you care?